The Blood Spilt Read Online Free PDF Page B

upstairs and get some sleep, then we’ll talk in the morning when you’ve sobered up.”
    Rebecka took a step forward in the boat. It rocked back and forth. For a moment the thought went through Måns’ mind that she was going to clamber out onto the jetty and slap him. That would be just perfect.
    “When I’ve sobered up? You… you’re just unbelievable!”
    She placed her foot against the jetty and pushed off. Måns considered grabbing hold of the boat, but that would cause a scene as well. Hanging on to the prow till he fell in the water. The office’s very own comedy turn. The boat slipped away.
    “Go to bloody Kiruna then!” he shouted, without paying any attention to who might hear him. “You can do what you bloody well like as far as I’m concerned.”
    The boat disappeared into the darkness. He heard the oars rattling in the rowlocks and the splash as the blades slid into the water.
    But Rebecka’s voice was still close by, and had gone up a pitch.
    “Tell me what could possibly be worse than this.”
    He recognized the voice from those endless rows with Madelene. First of all Madelene’s suppressed rage. Him without the faintest idea of what the hell he’d done wrong this time. Then the row, every time the storm of the century. And afterward that voice, a little bit higher pitched and about to splinter into tears. Then it might be time for the reconciliation. If you were prepared to pay the price: being the scapegoat. With Madelene he’d always trotted out the old story: said he was just a heap of shit. Madelene in his arms, sobbing like a little girl with her head leaning on his chest.
    And Rebecka… His thoughts lumbered drunkenly through his head searching for the right words, but it was already too late. The sound of the oars was moving further and further away.
    He wasn’t bloody well going to shout after her. She could forget that.
    Suddenly Ulla Carle, one of the firm’s two female partners, was standing behind him wondering what was going on.
    “So shoot me,” he said, and walked off up toward the hotel. He headed for the outdoor bar under the garlands of colored lanterns.

T UESDAY S EPTEMBER 5
    Inspector Sven-Erik Stålnacke was driving from Fjällnäs to Kiruna. The gravel clattered against the underside of the car and behind him the dust from the road swirled up in a great cloud. When he swung up toward Nikkavägen the massive ice blue bulk of Kebnekaise rose up against the sky on his left-hand side.
    It’s amazing how you never get tired of it, he thought.
    Although he was over fifty he still loved the changing seasons. The thin cold mountain air of autumn, flowing down through the valleys from the highest mountains. The sun’s return in the early spring. The first drips from the roof as the thaw began. And the ice breaking. He was almost getting worse with every passing year. He’d need to take a week’s holiday just to sit and stare at the countryside.
    Just like Dad, he thought.
    During the last years of his life, must have been at least fifteen, his father had constantly repeated the same refrain: “This summer will be my last. This autumn was the last one I’ll ever see.”
    It was as if that was the thing that had frightened him most about dying. Not being able to experience one more spring, a bright summer, a glowing autumn. That the seasons would continue to come and go without him.
    Sven-Erik glanced at the time. Half one. Half an hour until the meeting with the prosecutor. He had time to call in at Annie’s Grill for a burger.
    He knew exactly what the prosecutor wanted. It was almost three months since the murder of Mildred Nilsson, the priest, and they’d got nowhere. The prosecutor had had enough. And who could blame him?
    Unconsciously he stepped on the gas. He should have asked Anna-Maria for her advice, he realized that now. Anna-Maria Mella was his team leader. She was on maternity leave, and Sven-Erik was standing in for her. It just didn’t seem right to